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剥

剝
bāo / bō
verb HSK 7-9 #5,457

Meanings

  1. 1 to peel (by hand, of fruit, eggs, nuts)
  2. 2 to shell; to shuck; to skin

Examples

帮我剥几个鸡蛋。
Bāng wǒ bāo jǐ ge jīdàn.
Help me peel a few eggs.
她在剥花生。
Tā zài bāo huāshēng.
She is shelling peanuts.
这个橘子很好剥。
Zhège júzi hěn hǎo bāo.
This tangerine is easy to peel.

Tips

usage
Use bāo for the hands-on, kitchen-table sense of peeling: an orange, a banana, an egg, a shrimp, a clove of garlic. Sentences are usually concrete and have an obvious physical object.
mistakes
剥 has a second reading 剥 for literary or institutional "strip / expropriate": 剥削 (to exploit), 剥夺 (to deprive), 剥落 (to flake off), 剥离 (to peel away). Rule: hands on food → bāo; abstract stripping of rights, layers, or surfaces → bō.

Components

radical
刂 dāo
knife (right-side form of 刀)
Knife radical on the right — the right-side form of 刀, the indexing radical of 剥. To 剥 is to peel, strip, flay, skin — every sense involves a blade separating outer layer from inner. Same radical anchors 切 cut, 划 stroke, 刷 brush, 剪 scissors, 副 deputy — the wide blade-and-cut family.
phonetic
录 lù
to record (here phonetic)
Left side 录 supplies the sound: lù drifted to bāo with substantial Old Chinese onset shift. 录 originally pictured water dripping from a piece of carved wood — fitting 剥 (peel, strip), where bark or skin is being stripped away. Same phonetic also gives 绿 (green) and 禄 (salary).

Stroke Order

剥 bāo